Spending his childhood on the Clichy Estate in east London’s Stepney – an area developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s as part of the World War Two slum clearance programme – bass legend Jah Wobble says of The Beatles: “I was like 5 years of age. They were a phenomenon then, rising.
“All the mums and dads loved them. I remember the little girls at primary school were skipping [with a] rope, singing some song that had something to do with ‘she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Everybody loved them, but I was just puzzled slightly that people liked them as much as they did, because they didn’t excite me.”
All that has changed and Wobble – who found fame in the band Public Image Ltd (PiL) with his old pal John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols – has now collaborated with his two sons, John Tian Qi Wardle, 23, and Charlie Tian Yi Wardle, 21, on a very unusual album of Beatles covers.
Titled Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook, and released next month, it brings an Eastern sound to the band’s more Indian influenced tracks, using Chinese and Mongolian instruments. And if you didn’t find I Am The Walrus and Strawberry Fields pretty mind-bending already, you certainly will now.
Recalling the moment in 1967 when his opinion of The Beatles changed, Wobble, 67, says: “By that time they’d gone to India with the gurus and were smoking pot. Yoko Ono had got involved and they grew their hair, so they were no longer clean-cut.”
Recalling the first time he listened to Strawberry Fields, he continues: “I heard it on the radio, and everybody thought it was rubbish. The general view of everyone around the East End, was ‘rubbish.’
“Then I realised, years later, it’s two songs moulded together. It’s proper psychedelic, and it did something to me. You know, some sort of ego dissolution and oneness with the world around me or something. I just could not articulate it. It was a delicious feeling when I heard that music.”
One of the ‘four Johns’ in the early 1970s – four teenagers who shared the same first name – Wobble’s real name is John Wardle and the others were John Lydon, John Grey and John Ritchie – who joined the Sex Pistols in 1975 as Sid Vicious. Squatting and going to pubs, the gang of lads were all involved in the punk scene.
One squat was, allegedly, so cold that Wobble had to burn furniture to keep warm. He once described the punk days, saying: “We were angry, frustrated, left wing. All the institutions were mocked. It was a bit like Monty Python’s Ministry Of Silly Walks.”
And, at this time of excess, he found himself being ‘rechristened,’ during a drunken night when Vicious’ slurred pronunciation of John Wardle came out as Jah Wobble .., and the name stuck! But Wobble, the son of postman Harry and secretary Kathleen, has come a long way since his punk days, leaving PiL in 1980 for a prolific solo career and founding his band, The Invaders of the Heart, which explored world music and jazz fusion.
Collaborations over the years with high-profile artists have included Brian Eno, The Edge, Primal Scream, Sinead O’Connor – with whom he wrote Visions of You – Bill Laswell and Bjork. And Wobble, who struggled with booze, but has been clean and sober for 40 years, financed his creative pursuits with conventional day jobs, such as a long stint with London Underground.
He once said: “Best thing I ever done, getting clean.” Now running his own label, 30 Hertz Records, he often collaborates with his highly musical family, as he has on his new Beatles venture.
Wobble, who has two children – musician Natalie Wardle and actress Hayley Angel Wardle, by his first wife Margaux Tomlinsom – also has his two sons with his second wife Chinese-born guzheng player and harpist Zilan Liao, who he has been with since the mid 1990s.
His wife’s Beatles-mad father moved to Liverpool in 1981 and established the Pagoda Chinese Youth Orchestra there. Wobble, who converted from his Catholic roots to Buddhism, says of the new album: “I kind of felt Strawberry Fields had to be on it and Walrus.
“I thought, ‘god, how can you recreate that?’ And then what you do is don’t try and reinvent the wheel, just do it with your own thing, with humility, and it will be all right.”
Like his dad, Charlie was pretty unimpressed about the early Beatles hits. He says: ”I was never really into them as a kid. As I got older and started listening to more of their psychedelic stuff – Within You Without You – I started thinking there was a similarity between, I think, our sound and some of the stuff that was going on there.”
John T adds: “With The Beatles, I’ll be honest, I always sort of slept on them a bit, never really got too much into them.” But Wobble introduced him to hits like Sgt Pepper and his opinion of The Beatles was radically changed. He says: “They really took risks doing stuff that only the real sort of avant-garde people were doing at the time.“
Relocating to Stockport, Greater Manchester, a few years ago for family reasons, but still spending half his time in the capital, where he has a community project called Tuned in south London, the days of squatting, boozing and taking drugs are now part of Wobble’s distant past.
Today, he loves making music with his family. He says: “Just feels really natural. Me and me wife confirm this.” While he relishes working with his sons, he says he and his wife warned them off becoming musicians. He says he told them: “It’s obviously a great deal of fun … but you’ll never make any money. Don’t you do this. So, of course, they were bound to become musicians.”
But fans need not worry about Wobble hanging up his bass any time soon. He describes life as a musician, saying: “I just enjoy. It should be the same as a chef. Watch everyone enjoy your food, that’s great. And then cook another dish tomorrow.”
*Jah Wobble was speaking on Newshour on The World Service, which can be heard in full on BBC Sounds. Jah Wobble & Tian Qiyi: Mystic Liverpool – The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook will be released on August 14.
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